


how to love (better than any of us)

by liminal



Category: Sanditon (TV 2019), Sanditon - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, this is fleabag inspired and I am mad and sad after the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminal/pseuds/liminal
Summary: Charlotte and Sidney - one year, ten years in the future.This is a love story."Love is awful... It’s all any of us want, and it’s hell when we get there. So no wonder it’s something we don’t want to do on our own."





	how to love (better than any of us)

**Author's Note:**

> heads up, this is not going to end charlotte/sidney. ya girl deserves better and divorce was hella expensive in those days

i.

_This is a love story._

Back on the road to Willingden, and Charlotte thinks she has cried herself out of tears. She’s hiccoughed her way through the last few miles and peers out of the window through red-rimmed eyes.

Church steeples, thatched roofs, all the landmarks of her childhood come back into view, and the finality of it all hits her. Summer is over and Sanditon behind her, and she returns to what she ever was: a country girl fond of reading.

Except she vows through steadying breaths to be a little wiser, a little sharper. To enter a race not just for the taking part.

Tom Parker’s carriage pulls up at her father’s house and a dozen pairs of hands grab at her, cling onto her, deafen her with stories of every outing and trick she’s missed.

“And what was your happy news that you wrote of last,” Alison asks over plates of cake and sweet tea.

“Oh,” Charlotte hears herself say. “Just - how successful the Midsummer Ball was!” And swiftly changes the topic to the chill of sea bathing and all she’s learned about architecture.

Back in Willingden, where nothing ever happens, Charlotte keeps the tears in until nighttime. It doesn’t take a word and she’s sobbing into her mother’s lap, Mrs Heywood holding tight her broken, bewildered daughter.

“I love him, Mama,” she whispers.

ii.

_Love isn't something that weak people do._

Sidney wakes early and can’t bring himself to leave his bed.

His imagination soars, unbidden, to a church in the country where he waits for a dark-haired girl to make her way up the aisle, a girl who will smile shyly at him and repeat her vows without fear.

A girl who will flush as he kisses her on the threshold of the church and dance herself giddy as her hair streams over the both of them.

A girl he will lead to bed and undress slowly in the candlelight, whose soft skin he will press kisses to, who will gasp when they come together. A girl he will wake up to in the golden morning light, still slumbering against his chest; a routine they will repeat every morning, forever.

A girl many miles away, finding solace in solitude. A girl who is not the woman in Belgravia whose money is already rebuilding a seaside town she has no interest in.

Nothing for it. Sidney rises, dresses, makes his way downstairs. He has a bargain to fulfil, a fiancee to try and make happy.

The church bells sound like death knells.

iii.

_Women are born with pain built in._

The Royal Academy hums with the hushed voices of the beau monde. The great and the good and the socially ambitious stroll leisurely around paintings and sculptures so they can say they, too, attended the opening of the Summer Exhibition.

Sidney wonders whether he’s ever been anywhere this dull before.

“The invitation is an honour,” Eliza had said, in a tone that brooked no argument and Sidney didn’t care enough to start one.

So they joined the throng of married couples and chaperoned ingenues, their faces betraying a little of their relief when they bump into acquaintances and are spared their own conversation.

In the last room of New Somerset House, visitors peer down at tiny architectural models, a perfect world rendered in miniature bricks.

“Incredible,” Sidney murmurs, quite to himself, and as he straightens he doesn’t need the tightening hand around his arm to know he’s face to face with Charlotte Heywood.

Or a girl who used to be Charlotte Heywood, now clothed in the fashions of the day, all childhood softness replaced by sharp cheekbones and perfect posture.

“Miss Heywood,” he says for the first time in a year, his voice betraying the thumping heart and his wife’s vice-like grip. Here, in the flesh, are the dark eyes that have plagued him in the hours between waking and sleeping.

“Mr Parker. Mrs Parker. I hope you are both well,” comes the polite reply.

“Quite well, thank you,“ Sidney says softly, and Eliza cuts him off.

“Why, Miss Heywood, you are all grown up! And quite beautiful. Are you in town on a little trip?”

Charlotte smiles, charm personified, and Sidney wonders whether the girl who ran between the wickets on the sand might return if he untucked a curl from its perfect twist. “No, I’m a guest of Lady Susan Worcester’s for the summer.”

“How fortunate you are to meet with so many people keen to offer you such experiences.”

Charlotte locks eyes with Eliza, and Sidney feels rather than sees her iron will rising. Here, then, is the girl who ventured to London with no change in her pocket, who batted back every insult he flung her way. There she is, tucked away underneath crisp muslin and white gloves.

“It would be a shame, after all, to waste the summer at home, reading.”

A crafty rebuke and Eliza smiles tightly. “Indeed,” she says. “Well, look at what a summer you had last year! I hope you think fondly on your time at Sanditon.”

A sharp intake of breath, and Sidney isn’t sure whether it’s his or Charlotte’s. Lady Susan appears from nowhere to stand behind Charlotte, acknowledging the Parkers with a smile that reaches nowhere near her eyes.

“Oh no, Mrs Parker,” Charlotte says, half turning to leave, and Sidney knows how the sentence ends. “I don’t think of it at all.”

iv.

_I don’t know what to do with it._

_With what?_

_With all the love I have for her._

"Whoever would have thought she'd turn into such a beauty," Eliza says in lofty tones, sitting as far away from her husband as the carriage permits. "Such bright eyes. And her figure!"

Sidney barely turns his head in answer. "A testament to country air, I suppose," he says archly, and Eliza humphs. 

They are silent for the rest of the journey home. Eliza sweeps up the staircase to take off her hat and Sidney doesn’t miss the slamming door that follows. Nor does he miss her company as he prowls the library, glass in hand and his mind in the past.

Sanditon is thriving. Tom is happy, Mary smiles again, the children will never be troubled by the poorhouse.

Hand on heart, he can say he honestly tried. Tried to love his wife as she loved him, tried to ignore what lay beneath the veneer of bourgeois civility. Tried to be the best version of himself without the girl who made him want to reach that apex.

But it’s a question of compatibility, Sidney sees that clearly now. A year into his marriage and it’s harder to suppress a sigh at his wife’s ambitions, her sharp observations, her pointed comments about the money she has poured into his brother’s venture.

Harder now that he has been reminded so painfully of all it has cost. Sanditon survives at the expense of a loveless marriage and the happiness of a girl who gave it her soul for the summer, a girl as pretty and lifeless as a china doll.

And the worst of it is that he done to another what was done to him, that he sees himself in Charlotte: a broken-hearted would-be fiancee, spurned for greater riches and closed off to the world until someone miraculous came along.

In brandy-scented darkness he sees a figure in a white dress, loose hair dancing in the breeze and soft hands close to his face.

In the morning, he wakes on a hard leather chaise with a hangover, and he is quite alone.

v.

_People are all we’ve got._

She meets Henry Dagnell at a bridge party they’re both trying to escape, and Charlotte’s forced to admit that his impression of their overbearing host is superior to her own. With no way out, they sit in the corner of the room and once it is clear that he, too, disliked _Frankenstein_, their conversation begins in earnest.

At one point, Charlotte laughs, properly laughs, and despite her stays and the perfumed air and the frowns of the _grand dames_ whose cultivated silence she has interrupted, she can breathe again.

Lady Susan gives no indication that she is observing proceedings, but it’s no coincidence that Mr Dagnell comes calling the next day, and every day after.

vi.

_I think what they mean is, when you find somebody that you love, it feels like hope._

His tongue is as sharp as hers and his patience far greater. He comes bearing a new copy of _Endymion_ because he’s heard enough classical philosophy to last a lifetime, and lets himself be led around Hyde Park come sunshine or blustery winds because they’re both country folk at heart.

And gradually, Charlotte remembers that she wants to try everything, that she would rather feel too much than too little, that even the most jaded people can be surprised.

Henry Dagnell, in the space of a few weeks, rediscovers a girl lost for a year.

—

Rumours spread, of course. The second son of a gentleman who made his money in trade, a country boy with three thousand a year. A gentleman’s daughter brought up from the -shire, who’ll inherit enough books to fill a library and no room to put them in. Of course she’s entertaining his company.

Sidney Parker hears the worst of the whispers and spends his time biting back retorts. Charlotte is not his to defend, but he has a reputation for being rude and his stormy face surprises no one.

“I know Miss Heywood well enough to know that wealth wouldn’t come into her considerations,” he snaps one evening at the opera, driven mad by Charlotte sitting open-mouthed and spellbound in the Prince Regent’s box throughout the performance.

“Unlike some,” Eliza mutters.

vii.

_I love you._

_It’ll pass._

Sidney drinks himself into a stupor on the evening of the Midsummer Ball and Eliza doesn’t let him forget it. She goes out and stays out, and what she does is her own business.

Babington - deeply, madly in love with his own wife - eases Sidney back to his room.

“You have to try, old friend,” he says softly. “You owe her better than this.”

Sidney laughs harshly. “It was a business transaction, Babington. We can’t all be knights in shining armour.” A low blow, but Babington waves it off.

“I wasn’t speaking of your wife.”

—

Back in London, Sidney makes his way to Trafalgar House. The Parkers are gathering for little Lissy’s birthday, the dollshouse he had made for her was delivered that morning, and early September has kept August’s sunshine.

All is well until he gives his hat to the butler and sees there is an addition to the family party, seated in a shaft of sunlight with the birthday girl on her lap.

“Miss Heywood,” Sidney says, and Charlotte looks up, grinning broadly at whatever Alicia has garbled in her ear.

“Mr Parker,” she replies warmly, shaking away curls loosened from their braid. “I hope you are well.”

“Quite well, thank you. Are you the birthday surprise Tom and Mary have been promising my niece?” Sidney’s teasing is mainly directed at Alicia, who jumps off Charlotte’s lap and throws herself at her uncle. For a brief moment, they’re a picture of domesticity: Alicia on his hip, Charlotte smiling, Tom and Mary looking on proudly.

“Sadly not, Mr Parker, though I hope my appearance might make up somewhat for my lack of a present. I heard you had all returned after the ball and I- I came to tell Mr and Mrs Parker the news.”

The Parkers en masse turn to look at Sidney, who in turn looks to his sister-in-law.

“Charlotte is engaged,” Mary says with a smile, and there are perhaps only two others in the room who could detect the slight sorrow in her voice.

Engaged.

The end of the road.

Except there is colour in Charlotte’s cheeks and her eyes are bright and she looks _happy_.

The beginning of a road that takes her far from him and Sidney finds that he can bear the pain.

“My warmest congratulations, Miss Heywood,” he replies and to everyone’s surprise, he sounds like he means it.

viii.

_I don’t know what this feeling is._

_Is it God or is it me?_

They marry in the autumn, in the village where nothing ever happens, and the country wedding is anything but elaborate. They kiss on the threshold, showered by petals and Charlotte blushes almost as pink. They dance until she’s giddy and grinning, and in their room, they shed clothes with an alacrity that perhaps isn’t quite proper.

Charlotte Dagnell wakes first in the golden light, pleasurably sore, and watches her husband sleep. She presses soft kisses to his chest, not quite sure what is allowed or expected, and when warm hands caress her cheek and run through her tousled hair, a new routine is born.

One which will last them forever.

iv.

_This is a love story._

The invitation announcing the tenth Midsummer Ball at Sanditon and requesting the pleasure of Henry Dagnell Esq. and family’s company goes unanswered for a week.

_I do so hope you can join us, and see what is in no small part the result of Mrs Dagnell’s vision, _Tom Parker had written in postscript, and those words utterly lacking in any lasciviousness lead to an exploration of other hidden talents.

“I’d like to see what you’re capable of envisioning,” Henry breathes against his wife’s neck, hands resting on the cotton nightdress that covers her growing belly.

“Mm. And the children? Are we to leave them behind? Hertfordshire to Sanditon is no short trip.”

“We’ll strap James and Beatrice to the back of the carriage with the luggage, and I’ll have you two all to myself.”

Charlotte laughs.

“Very well, then. To Sanditon.”

—  
Landmarks Charlotte had thought might bring her pain appear on the horizon, and instead she finds she is only keen to reach the town.

Waterloo Terrace stands in all its glory with a hundred other buildings, all heaving with patrons and festooned with bunting advertising the Ball. Bathing machines stretch as far as the eye can see along the shoreline. Towards the end of the season, the town is thriving, a proud monument to the Parker ambition.

The Dagnells have no secrets but still Henry offers an unwavering arm to his wife as they take in the sights and chivvy the children along.

—

No expense has been spared for the ball. A hundred candles adorn every room in Denham Place, Diana Parker frets about champagne going flat, and the flickering lights catch the golden thread in Mary’s dress.

Charlotte wears blue and thinks nothing of it until she sees the ballroom again. The Dagnells greet their hosts, Mary tells Charlotte that she looks quite beautiful, and she tells herself that it’s the child in her belly that’s leaving her lightheaded.

Henry is attentiveness personified, fetching water and a chair and laughing at his wife as she raps him with her fan in irritation. Almost nine years married and at times, the bridge party in Eaton Square feels like yesterday.

Sidney watches them from the shadows, observing and himself observed. He stands unaccompanied and Charlotte still hears enough of the London gossip to know this isn’t uncommon, to know he is on a ship more often than he is at the house in Belgravia, that his absent wife’s investment has been more than twice repaid.

He crosses the ballroom to approach. The two men size each other up, nod politely, and Henry leaves them to it. A snatched moment alone together, and Sidney doubts that Charlotte remembers their last conversation in this room as well as he does.

“You certainly have your husband well trained,” he says lightly, but still he waits to see how Charlotte will react.

She laughs. “Yes, I’m hoping to have the same effect on the children. Are you well, Mr Parker?”

He hesitates before answering. Ten years on from a proposal he never made, a life he never knew, a woman who might never have been as happy as she is now.

“Very well, Mrs Dagnell. And how do you find Sanditon? It’s much changed, is it not. Or do you not think of it?”

A loaded question that only Sidney would ask, but Charlotte’s gaze goes to her husband, deep in conversation with Lord Babington; to Mary Parker, as much in love with Tom as ever she was; to the man who, through his selflessness, made it all possible.

“I think of it very fondly, indeed.”

_That’s why you find it all so painful._


End file.
